In Full Force: Badges of Becker County

by Kathy Altman

  She smiled. “Tell me about him.”

  Grady crawled over the basket and sat beside her. “He’s a good kid. He resents me, though, and I can’t seem to stop giving him reason to. Like traveling out here to handle a family crisis and leaving him behind. No wonder he thinks I don’t care. At the same time, he’s constantly complaining that I ‘hover.’” He lifted his hands to make air quotes.

  “I get the impression,” she said slowly, “that he thinks you’re keeping him away from the rest of his family.”

  “He’s right. Everyone but Peyton and Drew is an addict.”

  “Does Matt know that?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Maybe he thinks you’re keeping him away because of something he’s done. Maybe he thinks you’re ashamed of him.”

  Grady stared. “Why would he think that?”

  She shrugged, and struggled for a way to explain, a way to make him understand how it felt to never be good enough. But those weren’t the words that came out of her mouth.

  “I’ve been fine for years.” She spoke through clenched teeth, fingernails digging into the legs she held tight against her chest. “Never minded coming home to an empty house and eating across from an empty chair and curling up in an empty bed. Having flings instead of relationships because nothing could measure up to the memory of us. Then you came back to town and.…I hate you for making me remember what I’m missing, Grady West. And I hate you for making me wish I could have that with the man you are today.”

  For an instant he sat without moving, his expression dazed. Then he reached out, and his reaching was her undoing. Her tears fell so fast they began to choke her. The raw sounds escaping her throat were as shocking as they were humiliating.

  “Shh.” He unfolded his legs and tucked her up against him, her back to his chest. He shoved the remainder of the napkins at her, then wrapped his arms around her and pressed his lips to her neck. The heat of his mouth on her skin kept her in shudders.

  Long moments passed. A crease in the terrycloth towel bit into one heel, and the backs of her knees began to ache. But the steady sound of Grady’s breathing and the rhythmic stroke of his thumbs on her biceps made her wish they could hold this position forever.

  When her tears finally slowed, he kissed her neck and leaned back, settling his chin on her head. “It’s not always a good thing, having someone waiting at home for you,” he murmured. “Not if you don’t love them.”

  Charity tensed, expecting him to spill on his ex.

  “I missed you,” he said instead.

  “I missed you, too. So much it hurt.” She swiped her palms across her cheeks. “And what did I do about it? I slept with any man who showed interest.”

  “Exaggerating much?”

  “Not too much.”

  Grady’s chuckle sounded forced. “So when did you find time to do anything else?”

  “Is that supposed to be a compliment?”

  He exhaled. “It makes me sad you were so determined to forget what we had.”

  “It wasn’t about forgetting. It was about making sure you’d never want me again.”

  “I think it’s obvious that didn’t work.”

  “Which is frustrating, considering how much effort I put into it.”

  He grunted. “Can we move on?”

  “It bothers you.”

  “It bothers me. But it doesn’t change how I feel about you.”

  Enough with the feelings. Time to nudge the conversation in a different direction.

  The inevitable direction.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Charity stretched, pressing against Grady. She let her head drop to his shoulder and raised a hand to the back of his neck. The motion lifted her chest. She tangled her fingertips in his hair, desperate for him to touch her, and not in a sympathetic or soothing way. She wanted to be grabbed and squeezed and kneaded.

  He groaned. Had she said that out loud? She must have, because his hands scooted up over her waist and palmed her breasts. He squeezed and plucked and she writhed, reveling in the sensual overload provided by the hard grip of his hands, the softness of his hair in her palms and the hot, heavy cock prodding her ass.

  “Grady,” she moaned. Dear Lord, even her earlobes were tingling. How could he take her to the edge in mere seconds?

  His right hand moved to her jaw and tilted her face toward his. He took her mouth while his left hand slid down to her sex. He cupped her, then began to stroke her, and her trembling turned violent. She whimpered against his lips and arched into his touch. Close…she was so close…

  “Jesus,” he breathed. “We’re both ready to blow.” Despite her protests, he eased her forward and twisted her around so she faced him, her thighs propped over his. He kissed her again, deeper, and reached for the hem of her sweater. “I need you naked.”

  She was already wrenching his shirt out of his jeans. When she nearly had it free she hesitated, and covered his hands with hers.

  He groaned. “Charity—”

  “Wait.” She squeezed his hands. “Full disclosure.”

  His shoulders went rigid. “No details, please.”

  “Not that kind of disclosure. Your mother called me tonight.”

  His shoulders collapsed, and he gave a long-suffering sort of chuckle. “Which explains why you let me in the door.”

  She trailed a finger along the buttons on his shirt. “Not entirely.”

  “First the sheriff, and now my mother.” He found her mouth again and bit at her lower lip. “Why don’t they know better than to warn you away from something? It only makes you more determined to do it.”

  While his hands slid under her sweater, her fingers busied themselves with opening his shirt. “But you do know better.”

  “I do.” He gave up trying to tug her sweater over her head and started on the buttons instead. “Which is why it’s for your own good when I tell you that under no circumstances do I want you touching my zipper.”

  She chuckled as she pushed the two halves of his shirt apart, then dropped a hand to his lap.

  He gave a choking growl of protest. “I’m being serious here, Bishop. Do not put your hand in my pants.”

  She eased his zipper over his erection with one hand and squeezed with the other, loving the way he surged and rubbed against her touch. She slid her fingers under the waistband of his boxers, brushed up against ribbed heat, and watched his stomach flex as he struggled to breathe.

  “Like this?” she murmured. “Don’t touch you like this?”

  “Exactly like that.”

  She gripped him hard.

  His hips jerked. “Condoms,” he panted. “Back pocket of my jeans.”

  Reluctantly she released him and reached around him. They moaned in unison as the movement pushed her core against his cock. While she frantically searched the back of his jeans, Grady worked her yoga pants and her panties down over her hips. His hands roved over her bare ass as he pressed open-mouthed kisses to her breasts, and she almost forgot what she was looking for.

  “I can’t find them,” she cried.

  “Yours,” he breathed. “We’ll use yours. You must have plenty—”

  She froze.

  His hands flexed on her hips, then slid slowly away. “Hell.”

  Slowly Charity lifted up and eased her pants back into place.

  Grady swore again, and let his head drop back against the couch. “That didn’t come out right,” he said raggedly.

  She slumped down onto the floor between his feet. “Suddenly this doesn’t seem fair to you.” She pulled the sides of her sweater together while he zipped himself back into his jeans.

  “I had you. I almost had you, and I fucked it up.” With shaking hands, he ran his fingers through his hair.

  Charity’s cell rang. She pushed stiffly to her feet. “It’s Dispatch.” She strode into the darkened kitchen and scooped up her phone, her chest feeling cold and tight. So cold she barely noticed the chill of the linoleum beneath her
toes. “Bishop.”

  Twenty seconds later, she ended the call and gently set the phone back on the counter. A hot mass of misery clogged her throat. She struggled to swallow, fought to breathe.

  Grady moved up behind her and cupped her elbow. His fingers warmed her skin through the thin sleeve of her cardigan. “What is it?”

  She turned, looked up into his handsome face, and found herself scrabbling for what little control she had left. The genuine concern in his navy gaze tempted her to fall into his warmth, to burrow into his arms, to surrender all responsibility.

  But her department needed her.

  “For God’s sake, Char. Tell me what happened.”

  Charity pulled in a soggy breath. “Dixon Ironmaker just found his wife. Dead.”

  “Aww, hell.”

  She saw the question in his eyes. “Suicide.”

  “Shit.”

  “Exactly.” She straightened her spine, scooped up her phone and her keys, and slid her bare feet into a pair of boots.

  “No uniform?”

  “I’m not on duty, I’m just…I need to be there.” First Allison, then Sheila. Except Sheila had done a better job of it, damn her.

  The despair they must have been feeling… It made Charity want to crawl into bed and sob into her pillow. But that would be selfish. It wasn’t her pain to feel.

  Grady followed her outside to her SUV. He held the door open as she buckled herself in. “Don’t forget your jacket.”

  Charity stared down at her duty jacket and watched her own hand reach out and take it. He must have grabbed it on his way out of her house. Such a small gesture kicking off such a massive tangle of emotion: confusion, resentment, wistfulness.

  None of which she could afford. She couldn’t afford emotion, period.

  Grady leaned in. “I’m sorry about this. Please. Call me if there’s anything I can do.”

  “We’ve got it covered. This is what we do.”

  “Charity. I mean if there’s anything I can do for you.”

  “You shouldn’t want to.” She reached for the door handle, forcing him to step back. “I was using you.”

  He shook his head. “It’s too late to pretend what we have is casual, but we’ll work that out later. Right now your friend needs you. Drive safe.”

  In the rearview mirror Charity watched him watching her as she drove away.

  * * *

  Long hours later, Charity sat at a rigid angle inside her Camry, arms stacked on the steering wheel, windows a wide open welcome to the sharp, pine-scented chill of the midnight air. She was exhausted, but sleep was the last thing she wanted. After leaving Dix’s house, she’d driven home, but her own house had felt far too lonely. Still in her yoga pants and cardigan, with her bare feet jammed into her boots, she’d waved at Leon, switched vehicles, and headed back out again.

  A plastic bag and a roll of duct tape. That’s how Dix’s wife had killed herself. Not the most popular method among women, but there wasn’t any question of foul play—Sheila had videotaped her own death, no doubt to make sure her husband suffered for it as much as possible.

  Dix had been stoic, but there was no missing the shattered look in his eyes. Charity had watched the EMTs load his wife’s body onto the stretcher while Dix stood by, the massive weight of his guilt evident in the droop of his shoulders and the nothingness in his expression. He’d refused to leave the scene. In clipped, quiet tones he’d thanked the sheriff, Charity, and Mo for being there, when not one of them would have considered being anywhere else.

  His restraint and the misery struggling to break through it had made Charity ache on his behalf. It had also made her realize that not everything could be fixed. That sometimes in the fixing, you ended up breaking yourself. That maybe the best thing you could do was cut your losses and walk away.

  Which was why she’d decided to pull out of the election. The sheriff’s department deserved better.

  She did, too. Despite how badly she’d messed up with Hank.

  There were too many shadows in her life. She wanted to laugh again. She wanted to love again. She wanted Grady. And he’d wanted her, despite her past. He’d always made her feel lighter. Freer. And she’d never laughed with anyone like she’d laughed with Grady West. That hadn’t changed.

  What had changed was how he’d become both harder and softer. He no longer took any crap from his parents, and he fought for his sister and her son like a bulldog. At the same time, he’d learned to relax his own rules—no more bans on holidays, or reluctance to so much as talk to his parents. He would obviously do just about anything for his son.

  And even though they hadn’t seen each other in years, he’d known her.

  Known how much she loved waffles and meatball subs, how kids made her nervous, how injustice frustrated the hell out of her.

  He’d known her, yet still wanted to know her better.

  She liked that.

  She needed that.

  She needed him.

  She stared through her mud-speckled windshield at the massive brick house at the top of Pill Hill. Stately Wayne Manor, Grady used to call it and, with a teen’s casual malice, had dubbed his mother’s private garage the Bat Cave. Charity had seen it only once, and its dust-free, concrete coldness had given her the creeps, much like Roberta West herself, who would surely have ordered the house fumigated if she’d known an undesirable like Charity Bishop had been let loose in the place.

  Undesirable.

  Grady had never found her so.

  Despite her sadness, a combination of satisfaction and sizzle managed to work its way beneath her skin. She refused to feel guilty about it. Not after seeing what their lead detective was going through. He’d done all he could to make his wife happy, to make things work, but so much had been beyond his control.

  Like so much was beyond Charity’s control. There was plenty she did have final say in, though. Thing was, she no longer liked a lot of what she’d been saying. That was about to change.

  She was going to sneak into Stately Wayne Manor.

  She reared away from the steering wheel and pushed back against the seat, arms locked, palms slick. Nearly an hour had passed since she’d parked. No movement inside or out, no lights on or off.

  No more stalling.

  She grabbed her flashlight, scooted out of the car, and gently shut the door behind her. The tricky part would be avoiding those pesky cameras. She could only hope their location hadn’t changed since she’d last run this gauntlet more than a decade ago. If they had, she’d simply have to seduce Grady into erasing the footage.

  Her stomach wobbled as she crept to the edge of the property. She tucked the flashlight under one arm, hugged herself, and scanned the spooky collection of statues and shrubs spotlighted by well-hidden fixtures. So well hidden that as a teen Charity had tripped over more than one. One particularly nasty fall had earned her four stitches in her chin.

  She exhaled, and rubbed her palms up and down her arms. Some of the neighbors considered the Wests’ front lawn a year-round monument to too much money and too little taste. But what did Charity know about good taste? She ate Cocoa Puffs for dinner, told dirty jokes, and drove a crap car. No offense, Clarabelle. The only thing “designer” she owned was an unopened packet of Vera Bradley pencils Brenda June had given her one Christmas.

  Unless you counted her Oakley boots.

  Besides, the Wests’ front yard was a damned sight more attractive than her mother’s. When the Bishops stepped out on their front porch with their morning coffee, they were greeted with rusted out tractor rims, stacks of mismatched lawn furniture, a baby blue toilet Hank had promised two decades ago to turn into either a planter or a barbecue, a cinder block fire ring, and a faded, green-striped couch they’d attached with rope to the thick limb of an ancient oak tree to create a swing.

  Charity jumped as a hoarse series of yips sounded in the distance. A fox? Her gaze roved the grounds and her knees went slack. Was she seriously going to do this? What if she
got caught? She never had as a teenager, but it would be a gazillion times more embarrassing now. For Grady, too. His son was in there. Justine and her kids. Grady’s parents. As much as the Wests despised Phil Smiley, they’d have him here in a flash if they discovered Charity sneaking into their house. She could see the headline now.

  Redneck Sheriff Hopeful Stalks Wealthy Ex-Boyfriend

  Except…she wasn’t running for sheriff anymore. And though she was still a cop, wasn’t it a little late to worry about professionalism and propriety?

  Way to rationalize, Bishop.

  Tonight she wasn’t a cop. Tonight she was a woman. A woman who’d finally realized life was too short to hold on to ancient grudges and convenient cowardice.

  A horny woman hauling ass across the street.

  She headed for the border of trees to the left of the house. A crawl past the pair of two-tier, pineapple-topped fountains, a duck walk through the alley of pink and purple azaleas, and a dash past the koi pond should keep her out of camera range and get her to Grady’s window.

  Minutes later she was there, leaning against the rough brick exterior, breath hustling in and out of her lungs. She couldn’t help an exhilarated laugh. She’d had to scale a wrought iron fence she hadn’t remembered and made far too much noise stumbling through a bed of decorative gravel. Still, it had been easier than she’d expected.

  Brushing the dirt off her palms, Charity pushed away from the wall, tilted her head back, and studied the second story window that was her target. Not only did she happen to know the location of a spare key, she also knew the alarm codes had been written on the back of the air conditioning unit. So, yeah. She could get inside.

  But she had to draw the line somewhere.

  A quick, fortifying inhale. Flashlight heavy against her armpit, she plucked her cell from her pocket and thumbed a few buttons. Before she got the chance to wonder if Grady would even pick up, he did.

  “Char. You all right?”

  Pathetic how the sleepy concern in his voice made her feel like she’d slipped into the caressing warmth of a Jacuzzi. She leaned her forehead against the brick. The sharp ridges dug into her skin, but she couldn’t bring herself to care.