Otterly Scorched

by Tara Sivec

  “You lazy motherfuckers haven’t even set up a field command yet!” we hear in the distance.

  “It’s him! Oh shit, it’s the girly man!” Davidson whispers excitedly, scrambling with his phone. “Fucking hell, Harley! You’re the reason we can’t have nice things. I totally missed getting that on video.”

  Looking away from him before I’m tempted to stick my foot out and trip him, I see The Backyard has added at least fifty new employees since the last time I was here, and they’re all standing around in a group at the side of the house, by the trail that leads to the dog kennels. Along with one rookie cop named Josh I worked with a few weeks ago, when an exotic parrot was taken from a pet shop. They’re all staring at a man standing a few feet away from them, flailing his arms around and losing his shit all over them.

  My feet stutter to a stop about twenty feet away when I get my first look at the man from the phone call. Well, the back of him at least. After that recording Davidson made me listen to a million times before we left to drive over here, I assumed the man we’d be dealing with would be giving off more of a… I don’t know… crazy-dude-who’s-off-his-meds vibe. Skinny with gangly limbs, wild hair sticking up all over the place, possibly gross, wiry facial hair with some food stuck in it, bouncing around like he just did a line of coke, scratching at invisible itches on his skin, while he rants about his babies.

  What I’m currently staring at with my mouth open is the greatest ass in a pair of jeans I have ever, or will ever, see in my lifetime. This is not some little man with an otter fetish. From the back, this is a goddamn work of art, standing at least six feet and a couple inches tall, with a broad, muscular back and tapered waist, all of it hugged tightly by a long-sleeved black T-shirt.

  “You’re just standing around with your thumb up your ass during a fucking emergency!” Great Ass yells angrily again as he widens his stance and crosses his arms in front of him.

  Neither Josh nor any of the employees move. They continue standing around in a cluster, eyes wide and scared as hell.

  “Why does crazy have to be so hot?” I mutter with a shake of my head, the damn voice on this guy doing things to me again.

  I can’t even say it started doing things to me seconds ago when I found out it was attached to someone so… impressive from the back. When the shrieking and crying stopped on the recording back at the office, and the voice was just deep and masculine, the more I heard that voice, the more the sound of it made me want to punch my fist through a wall and hump the closest object equally. It was weird and unprofessional, especially sitting directly across from my dad and brother.

  “If you could just calm down for a minute….” Josh trails off as Davidson and I both groan, while a collective gasp comes from the workers.

  Poor Josh. He’s young and eager to learn, and I know he’s going to be one of the best cops Franklin County has ever hired someday, but today is not that day. You just never tell a crazy person to “calm down.” Even my idiot brother knows that rule.

  Crazy, Great Ass takes an intimidating step toward Josh, and I leap into action, my cop instincts still sharp as a tack. There are too many innocent bystanders, and Josh is just standing there like a deer in headlights with his hands up in the air. It leaves his service weapon wide open for the taking, and there’s no telling what this guy is about to do. Since he’s in the process of moving, I use the same tactic I was going to use if I went through with my earlier fantasy of tripping Davidson while we walked. I rush up next to the guy, crouched down as low as I can get, then kick my leg out, and connect it with his shin.

  For the first time since I got out of the car, the rage is shocked out of this guy as he pitches forward without a sound, his big body slamming into the ground like a downed tree. Since I still have the element of surprise on my side, I immediately jump onto his back and straddle his waist. Quickly grabbing both his hands and yanking them back behind him, I pull the pair of cuffs I still carry everywhere with me out of my back pocket, slapping them on him.

  “Boo-yah! Got that shit on video!” Davidson shouts from somewhere.

  Everything happened in a matter of seconds, and seconds is all it takes for the shock to wear off and the crazy to come back out as the man starts jerking and twisting around underneath me, letting out a streak of curses.

  “Get the fuck off me, and get these goddamn fucking cuffs off me!” he shouts, craning his neck to try to look back at me as he continues struggling beneath me, which gives me a quick view of his profile.

  No gross, wiry facial hair with food stuck in it here. Just a neatly trimmed, thick, short, lumberjack beard surrounding some nice, full lips, with matching dark-brown hair a little on the longer side, hanging down messily over this half of his face.

  Such a waste of good looks and proper facial grooming.

  Keeping one of my hands securely on his cuffed wrists, I place the other one in the center of his back and bend down so I’m closer to the side of his face, ignoring the fact that he smells like cedar and fresh air and not like soup and onions, which is what I assume all crazy dudes who lost their otters and are off their meds smell like.

  “I’ll take the goddamn fucking cuffs off you when you stop acting like a dipshit,” I inform him, his body suddenly going completely still between my thighs that are still straddling his waist.

  “You have got to be shitting me right now,” he mutters, the hair-covered side of his face disappearing as he turns his profile away from me, drops his head down, and smacks his forehead into the dirt not once but three times in a row.

  That stupid voice again. It still makes me want to pull my fist back and slam it into his jaw and then kiss the pain away. What the hell is happening right now? Did Davidson slip weed into my coffee earlier? Am I high?

  This guy makes everyone think he locks his kids in cages and calls 9-1-1 from an animal sanctuary, where he’s been practically holding people hostage with his ranting and yelling all morning, and I’m thinking about kissing him.

  I need to get a grip. Or get laid.

  “Josh, you need to call dispatch and have someone come pick this guy up. They’ll need a transport cage in their vehicle to get him to the station,” I tell the rookie cop, who is still standing a foot away with his hands in the air, his wide eyes staring down at me.

  “Fucking hell, Harley, I don’t need to be arrested. I’m not the criminal here,” the guy between my legs says in a muffled voice with his face still in the dirt.

  My heart starts pounding in my chest when he says my name, and not because he’s some strange, crazy guy who knows it when I haven’t even said it yet. It’s the way he says it. Like he’s annoyed with me, but he also kind of wants to make out with me.

  There it is again! The urge to punch and hump something at the same time!

  Grabbing a handful of the dark hair on the back of his head, which is surprisingly soft and silky, I lift his head up and force his face to the side until his hair falls out of the way, and one gorgeous hazel eye looks back at me in annoyance.

  No. There is no fucking way.

  “It’s okay, Harley. He really does work here. This is how he is all the time. Angry and insufferable,” Nanci, one of the elderly volunteers, states as she moves away from the group to stand next to Davidson, who is still recording everything.

  “Christ,” the man growls in irritation.

  The one eye—which is more green than brown, with little flecks of gold in it—glances back at me, and my hand that still has a firm grasp on the hair attached to his head starts to shake. My heart is thundering so hard in my chest right now I’m pretty sure people are going to think The Backyard suddenly has elephants that are all stampeding this way.

  There is only one man in the entire universe whose voice could make me want to punch and screw something at the same time who has the same gorgeous-colored eyes. But he doesn’t work at an animal sanctuary. He would never do something so selfless.

  Nope. No. Fucking. Way.

  He sig
hs and then speaks again. “Yeah, it’s me.”

  Clearly, the shock and confusion is written all over my face, because I still don’t believe what is happening right now.

  “Say something else,” I order, my voice coming out all whispery and nervous instead of like a badass bitch who just took down a guy a head taller and a hundred pounds heavier.

  “How’s that half-dash of cinnamon been working out for you, sweetheart?” The words are said in a dull, monotone voice instead of one filled with sarcasm and flirtation, but it does the trick.

  “Son of a bitch!” I instantly shout, jerking my hand out of his hair like it’s on fire, scrambling off his back, and jumping up and as far away from him as possible.

  He easily flips to his side with his hands still cuffed, gets his legs under him, and stands up to face me.

  Gone is the lean, pretty boy with slicked-back hair, a clean-shaven, weekly-facialed face, and designer three-piece suits, who always had a smirk and a sparkle to his eyes that made you want to kick him in the nuts. Now, he looks like someone introduced Grizzly Adams to a pair of trimmers and turned him into an Olympic swimmer-slash-lumberjack sexual piece of alpha male, who looks like he hasn’t smirked in years and wouldn’t even know what to do with his facial muscles to achieve any show of amusement. And forget the sparkle. His eyes look like they’ve seen some shit, and I even notice some tattoos peeking up out of the collar of his cotton shirt and trailing up his neck.

  I must be in The Twilight Zone or an alternate reality. All he ever talked about at work was how his stupid body was a temple and all that crap.

  “Dax fucking Trevino,” I whisper, still in shock as I shake my head.

  “No shit?” Davidson suddenly laughs. “The crying, girly man is Dax Trevino? Detective Douchebag?”

  “Shut up,” I mutter, not sure if I’m trying to quiet my brother so he doesn’t annoy Dax any more than he already seems to be, or if it’s because I’m afraid of what might come out of Davidson’s mouth next.

  “I can’t believe this is the guy you crushed on when you were a rookie detective! Classic.” Davidson snorts.

  Yep, definitely the latter.

  I think I see a hint of one of Dax’s smirking dimples behind that facial hair, but it disappears faster than it takes me to jab my elbow into my brother’s side, so I’m assuming I imagined it. My slacker of a brother never hears a word I say that’s important, but leave it to him to hear and remember shit I bitched about years ago, when I thought he wasn’t paying attention during one of his many consecutive hours in a row of playing Modern Warfare.

  “Can you take the cuffs off now?” Dax asks in a low, still-annoyed voice. “I really do work here. And this really is a fucking emergency no one gives a shit about.”

  I quickly and clumsily pull the handcuff keys out of the front pocket of my jeans and walk over to Dax, ignoring the fact that just moments ago I had been ogling the ass of a man I vowed to hate forever and ever. He turns around for me so I can uncuff him while the employees who were standing around quickly scatter in all different directions, including Josh, who still looks like he might pee his pants at any moment as he jogs back in the direction of the parking lot. Nanci seems to be the only one brave enough to stick around, stepping up next to my brother, as Dax looks back over his shoulder at me while I fumble, trying to get the key in the damn tiny hole on the cuffs.

  “Nice hair,” Dax mutters quietly. “Looks good on you.”

  My fingers pause right when I get the key in the lock, and I slowly move my eyes up to his, still surprised to see him looking at me so seriously. Without any twinkle, and without any lame come-on to go with the compliment.

  As soon as I quit the force a year ago, I chopped off twelve inches of my long brown hair, keeping it chin-length since then and letting it hang wavy, natural, and low maintenance. Two months ago, I decided to go nuts and dyed it white-blonde. It took my dad and brother six months to even notice I cut all my hair off. They still haven’t noticed I’m now blonde.

  It’s doing absolutely nothing to me that Dax Trevino noticed… and likes it.

  “What are you even doing here? In town? I heard you went off to join the military and be a big hero.”

  Dax’s entire body stiffens as I finally get the cuffs off.

  Not that I was keeping track or anything, but this isn’t that big of a town. Word traveled fast when Franklin’s golden-boy manwhore suddenly abandoned a promotion he got working for another police department on a huge case, to up and join the army, and then disappeared off the face of the earth.

  Taking a step back from Dax, he slowly turns to face me, rubbing one of his now bare wrists with his free hand.

  “Moved back a month ago. I take care of the otters here.”

  His words to me are clipped, and he absolutely doesn’t offer any extra information. All of this is so unlike the Dax I used to know, without all the flirting and innuendos, that if I weren’t currently looking into those familiar hazel eyes, and he hadn’t made that stupid comment about the damn cinnamon dash, I’d still refuse to believe it was him.

  “Don’t sell yourself short,” Nanci tells Dax before looking at me. “He’s the best Otter Aquarist I’ve ever worked with, and you know I’ve volunteered for a lot of zoos and shelters. He loves those little otters like they’re his own kids, which was definitely the cause for all the confusion this morning. I still can’t believe you called them your babies.”

  Nanci makes a tsking sound, and a little bubble of laughter comes out of me before I can stop it. I have to cover it with a cough and a hand over my mouth. All I can picture is this muscly, hairy, serious man rolling around on the ground, giggling and frolicking with otters. Even the image of the Douchebag Dax from my past doing something so ridiculous makes me want to laugh, because he would have bitched about getting his suit dirty and his hair messed up.

  “There was no fucking confusion. That dumbass at dispatch had my address and knew I was calling from the goddamn Backyard,” Dax complains in a quietly pissed-off voice. “Of course I was fucking talking about animals and not kids. Jesus.”

  Dax’s anger quickly sobers me, and I remember I still have a job to do, even though this case is clearly not going to be the piece-of-cake, stress-free one I thought it would be and has rapidly turned into the case of my nightmares.

  “Well, you’re lucky the young man you abused this morning at 9-1-1 forwarded your information to Harley and her business. Claws and Effect Pet Detectives will get Otterham Lincoln and Christotterpher Columbus back home with us in no time,” Nanci gushes, giving me a big smile.

  Dax’s eyes never leave mine, and the way he’s staring at me so seriously makes me itchy, and sweaty, and nervous. I will never admit this to another living soul, but his carefree charm is honestly what first drew me to him at that damn bar. It was more toned-down, and it was more fun and real, instead of the douchebag he portrayed at work. Even that guy could make me crack a smile every once in a while with his ridiculous comments. But this is the complete opposite, and it’s weird. I don’t know what to say to him, and I don’t know how to act.

  “You’re not a cop anymore.”

  It’s a statement, not a question, and he says it so softly I barely hear him.

  “Nope,” I reply with a shake of my head.

  Part of me really wants to say something sarcastic to him just out of old habit and to get him to lighten up a little, but I don’t. He’s just so serious. It’s blowing my damn mind, and I don’t like it.

  Dax is quiet for a few seconds, and then he gives me a nod. “Good for you.”

  Those three quietly spoken word, and that knowing look in his hazel eyes are like a punch to the gut.

  “Honestly, I don’t even like being a cop. I’m just doing it because my dad was a cop, and I know it makes him proud.”

  That stupid conversation we had at McCallahan’s another lifetime ago pops into my head. Of course he’d still remember what we talked about that night. He spent a m
onth trying to get me to acknowledge a moment that I worked my ass off to forget. The best four hours I’ve ever had in my life with a guy—or anyone, for that matter—and then I walked into work the next day, and that guy was replaced with a walking, talking sexual harassment lawsuit waiting to happen. Not only that, but he treated me like I was any other woman he just wanted to sleep with and then toss to the side.

  “My buzz is wearing off. Are we gonna wrap this up or what?” Davidson complains, pulling me out of my trip down memory lane.

  I open my mouth to tell him to shut up again, when Dax speaks—or should I say yells—to no one in particular.

  “Somebody better start doing their goddamn job!” He starts to storm by me, pausing long enough to lean down and speak lowly, close to my ear. “Looks like you were right. Everyone knows what a little bitch I am now.”

  His shoulder brushes against mine as he continues moving, stomping off down the walkway away from us.

  The day I made that prediction about Dax pops into my head, and I can remember perfectly how disappointed, angry, and hurt I felt in that moment when I said those things to him. I hated that he played me for a fool after I let my guard down for the first time in my life. And I hated that he could still make me laugh and make me want to kiss his smartass mouth, so I said something stupid just to get him to leave me alone. Never in a million years did I think what I said would actually come true. I should be jumping up and down in victory, but the memory of those hazel eyes without any sparkle keeps my feet firmly on the ground and my hands down at my sides.

  Nanci immediately jumps into action and starts ushering me and Davidson toward The Backyard Visitor Center, forcing me to look away from the cropping of trees at a bend in the walkway where Dax disappeared.

  “Don’t let Dax scare you. His bark is worse than his bite,” Nanci reassures me, assuming my silence is because of Dax’s outburst and not because I’m still wondering what in the hell happened here today.