Text copyright ©2017 Lani Lynn Vale
All Rights Reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Dedication
Dedications blow big balls when you’ve already dedicated a book to everyone you like (all eighty of them). (Just kidding) (Kind of).
Anyway, I’m going to write about something I think is awesome. Naps. I bet you don’t take enough naps, and you are really doing yourself a disservice by not taking them. I take one every day if I can. Sometimes all I can fit in is thirty minutes. Other times, it’s a full blown four-hour nap.
Napping makes me a better person. It also helps me write better so I’m not sitting here typing useless shit to reread later and think, WTF did I just write?
Anyway, if this is coherent, you can thank my nap.
Acknowledgements
Joe Adams- Model
Golden Czermak- Photographer
Danielle Palumbo- My awesome content editor.
Ellie McLove & Ink It Out Editing- My editors
My mom- Thank you for reading this book eight million two hundred times.
Cheryl, Leah, Kathy, Mindy, Barbara & Amanda—I don’t know what I would do without y’all. Thank you, my lovely betas, for loving my books as much as I do.
Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Epilogue
What’s Next?
Other titles by Lani Lynn Vale:
The Freebirds
Boomtown
Highway Don’t Care
Another One Bites the Dust
Last Day of My Life
Texas Tornado
I Don’t Dance
The Heroes of The Dixie Wardens MC
Lights To My Siren
Halligan To My Axe
Kevlar To My Vest
Keys To My Cuffs
Life To My Flight
Charge To My Line
Counter To My Intelligence
Right To My Wrong
Code 11- KPD SWAT
Center Mass
Double Tap
Bang Switch
Execution Style
Charlie Foxtrot
Kill Shot
Coup De Grace
The Uncertain Saints
Whiskey Neat
Jack & Coke
Vodka On The Rocks
Bad Apple
Dirty Mother
Rusty Nail
The Kilgore Fire Series
Shock Advised
Flash Point
Oxygen Deprived
Controlled Burn
Put Out
I Like Big Dragons Series
I Like Big Dragons and I Cannot Lie
Dragons Need Love, Too
Oh, My Dragon
The Dixie Warden Rejects
Beard Mode
Fear the Beard
Son of a Beard
I’m Only Here for the Beard
The Beard Made Me Do It
Beard Up
For the Love of Beard
Law & Beard
There’s No Crying in Baseball
Pitch Please
Furious George (Spring 2018)
The Hail Raisers
Hail No
Go to Hail
Burn in Hail
What the Hail
The Hail You Say
Hail Mary
The Simple Man Series
Kinda Don’t Care (4-5-18)
Maybe Don’t Wanna (5-4-18)
Get You Some (6-7-18)
Prologue
To everyone that received a book from me for Christmas, they’re due back at the library by Friday.
-How you know you’re poor
Winnie
Conleigh slammed the door shut, and she locked it for good measure.
I sighed and looked out the window, hoping to find the patience to move on from this new teenage attitude that my recently minted sixteen-year-old was throwing at me.
My eyes caught on our new neighbor, and I gasped.
My new neighbor was gorgeous.
He was wearing a tight pair of Wrangler jeans that fit him like a glove, a black faded t-shirt, and a belt that held a big black gun to his hip. Next to the big black gun was a gold shield, one that I couldn’t read from this distance, but I knew to be a shield for the Mooresville, AL Police Department.
“You going to do okay there?”
I smiled and answered into my phone. “Yes,” I sighed. “I’m going to be okay here.”
“Good, I’m glad.” She sighed. “I’m home and trying to sort through the mountain of expensive shit that my parents left me in the will. Do you think they’d turn over in their graves if I burned the whole place down to the ground?”
“I’m pretty sure with that corrupt little police town you’re living in, they’ll find a way to charge you for it, then put you away for murder on top of that.”
Krisney started to laugh.
“They’re not that bad.”
“No, they’re not,” I admitted. “How about you just go through the junk, hold an estate sale, and post a dollar on everything?”
Krisney started to giggle, but my attention was laser focused on the man who was no longer standing at his mailbox.
“Your neighbor,” I found myself saying. “Who is he?”
“The one to the left, or the one across the street?” she questioned.
“Across the street. The silver-haired hottie who has muscles on top of muscles.”
“Steel Cross, better known as Big Papa to his MC, or BP to the guys at the police department where he works,” she answered instantly. “He was also one of the reasons I bought that house. I figured what better and safer neighborhood to buy into than one next to the chief of police.”
“The chief of police?” I breathed. “You’re shitting me.”
“Nope,” Krisney said. “Anyway, I gotta go. But he’s really nice. Don’t be scared to talk to him.”
She hung up before I had a chance to say that there was never going to be a day that I’d talk to him. Not willingly. He was too pretty for me and my broken self. He’d probably chew me up and spit me out.
But as I watched him in all of his alpha male glory as he stepped in front of a speeding car, and then proceeded to give the teenager the lecture to end all lectures, I realized that if he ever spoke to me first, I’d have no choice but to talk to him.
The sheer magnetism of him was enthralling.
Chapter 1
I’m at that age where a twenty-two-year-old is looking good…but so is his dad.
-Winnie’s secret thoughts
Winnie
<
br /> “Cody, no,” I called, seeing my son, who was all of five years old, staring at me with the most heart-breaking expression on his face.
“Cody.”
That came from Conleigh, my eldest daughter. Conleigh was sixteen, going on forty-three.
She was my surprise baby when I was sixteen. She was also more of a mom than I was at times—at least lately.
No, before you ask, they do not have the same father. Yes, my husband had loved Conleigh like she was his own, or at least, he had while we were married. Now, I wasn’t so sure. Conleigh wasn’t taking this move well. My husband had left me for another woman, and he then forced us to move out of our home because, technically, it all had been his when we’d gotten married.
“Mom, seriously?”
I looked up to see her staring at me with anger in her eyes.
“Seriously, what?” I growled. “I can’t. I don’t have any money, and I can’t buy it for him right now.”
“I do,” she replied stubbornly.
I ground my teeth
“I know you do,” I said. “But, unfortunately, he can’t always get what he wants, and you need that money for lunch this week.”
“I can make a lunch,” she offered.
I looked up at the ceiling and counted to ten.
“He does not need the car. He has fifteen just like it at home. You do not need to buy it because you have to pay for lunch next week. Do not make me repeat it again.”
Plus, Conleigh rarely ever got up in time to get herself out the door on a normal day. Adding making a lunch to the routine would surely make her later than she normally was.
We’d just pulled into the check-out lane when the sliding doors of the grocery store opened and two cops rolled in. One of them was my ex-husband, and the other was a man that looked downright appetizing.
Not that my ex-husband didn’t look appetizing. He did.
He’d always been attractive.
But the man standing beside him? Yeah, he was gorgeous.
Then again, anything would look good next to my ex at this point.
My ex who had left me when I’d needed him the most.
“Daddy!”
I groaned as I watched my son run toward his father, who scooped him up and acted like he’d seen him only hours ago instead of the three months it had stretched out to.
I gritted my teeth and handed the lady my card.
“I’m sorry, but it’s saying declined.”
I gritted my teeth, then looked at the pint of ice cream that I’d thought to get as a reward for my day.
“Put that back,” I murmured. “Oh, and this.”
I handed over my baby wipes. I could use the rags that I’d been using over the last week. It seemed to be working all right.
She did as instructed, looking at me with pity in her eyes, and I ignored it.
“Okay, it went through.”
I breathed a sigh of relief and started stacking my bags into the cart, pushing it stiffly out into the main aisle that would lead out of the store.
“Hello,” I murmured to the officer who was with my ex.
“Hi.” He smiled.
The smile didn’t meet his eyes.
I was sure he was wondering, just like everyone else, why I’d ‘left my husband.’
I hadn’t. He’d left me.
But no one knew that because he told them something totally different than what actually happened.
And, since this town was so fucking small, and it’d been the town I’d been transplanted into when I’d married my ex, I didn’t figure they’d believe me anyway.
My ex was a cop, the town heartthrob when he was growing up, and an all-around American hero.
An American hero to everyone but me.
“Let’s go,” I ordered softly to my daughter.
Conleigh walked over to her brother who was talking animatedly with his father and took him out of Matt’s arms. Then she placed him on his feet and led him out without a word to my ex.
Cody went, but he only had eyes for his daddy as he walked grudgingly out of the store.
I didn’t stop and talk to either of them as I passed, but I felt my ex’s eyes on me the entire way.
Then again, I also felt like someone else was looking, too.
I pretended it was the other cop.
At least in dreams, I could still attract a man with the fucked-up body of mine.
Chapter 2
I’ve had my patience tested. I’m negative.
-Steel’s secret thoughts
Steel
“Big Papa, seriously.” Aaron growled. “This isn’t going to work.”
I rolled my eyes and walked away, leaving him to argue with himself.
He’d already given me his best argument, and I wasn’t listening to the rest of the shit excuses he gave me.
I did not, under any circumstances, want to deal with that woman’s shit today. So yes, I was ignoring her phone calls. I was also avoiding her.
But she was seriously fucking annoying, and I couldn’t deal.
My phone rang, and I glanced at the screen, breathing a sigh of relief when I saw my son’s name pop up instead of my ex’s.
“Hey, boy,” I said.
“Hey, Dad,” Sean greeted. “Did you know that your ex is now calling my phone?”
I growled under my breath. “How does she even have your phone number?”
I knew for certain I hadn’t given it to her.
“Don’t know. But she calls and wakes up the baby again, I might very well have to contain my wife.”
I chuckled under my breath, my eyes automatically scanning the gas station around me as I backed into a corner to take the call.
My eyes lit on a young girl, maybe sixteen or seventeen, who was browsing the aisle of crap that every gas station had. Earphones, air fresheners, tiny travel packs of Tylenol and ibuprofen. Things of that nature that you might need on a road trip.
Though, this one also had a little bit more than most since the station was one of those super ones that the truckers all used right off the interstate.
“I’m sorry, Sean. I don’t know why Lizzibeth is calling. I’ve already spoken with her today and told her to stop calling everyone. I’ll take her call again tonight when I’m off shift and figure it out. In the meantime, just keep doing what you’re doing.”
Sean grunted. “I will.”
Then he hung up.
I shoved the phone into my pocket, continuing to keep my eyes on the girl.
Where I was, partially covered by a stack of Bud Light, meant that only my eyes and the top of my head were visible. Which had to be the reason why the girl, when she glanced around, didn’t see me. Otherwise, I knew that she wouldn’t have shoved two pairs of earphones into her jacket and then started to walk out the door.
I sighed and followed her out, gesturing to Aaron that I’d be outside.
He nodded his head and continued perusing the hotdogs rolling on the warmer.
“Hey, kid.”
She looked up, startled to see me, and then her face fell.
She looked familiar, but I couldn’t quite place her. It’d come back to me once she told me her name. I knew it.
“Let me have them.” I gestured with my hand.
She looked down, then she pulled the earbuds out of the pocket of her jacket and placed them in the palm of my hand.
“Why did you steal these?”
She grimaced. “Because I needed them.”
“You needed them so bad that you had to steal them?”
She looked away.
I knew she wasn’t going to tell me why. Most of these teenagers didn’t have a single bone in their body that gave them even a little bit of self-preservation.
“What’s your name?”
She didn’t hesitate to answer. “Conleigh.”
The name didn’t sound familiar, which surprised me. I knew ne
arly everyone in this town.
“Where do you live?”
“Off Mimosa.”
My street.
“Let’s go,” I said to the girl.
“But my ride…”
“Your car can stay here until I speak with your parents.”
The girl didn’t say anything as I escorted her to my cruiser.
I could tell that she was worried.
She should be.
A police officer had just caught her stealing shit from a gas station.
But, if she hadn’t truly looked terrified and repentant for stealing the earphones, then I would’ve booked her just because I could. Kids these days were getting worse and worse, and I wanted to make sure that she got herself straight now rather than being forced to do it the hard way later.
After depositing her in my cruiser, I went back inside and put the earphones on the counter.
“Let me get these.”
“That all?” Patty, who was behind the counter today, asked.
I nodded.
She rang them up and said, “Seven dollars.”
I handed her a ten, got my change, then gestured to Aaron who was still in front of the hot dogs. “Just get the boudin.”
Then I left, leaving him to his own devices—and meat selection.
Once in my car, I made my way to my street—also her street—and asked for more specific information.
She directed me to the house that was directly across from mine.
Shit.
I knew who lived there.
I hadn’t seen her—or her kids apparently—much, but I knew.
Winnifred Holyfield, Matt Holyfield’s ex-wife. Matt Holyfield, a cop in my station. Fuck.
This kid’s dad was a fucking cop. One of my fucking cops.
Goddammit.
I pulled into her driveway without another word, then got out.
Once I opened her door, I walked with her up to the front door and knocked before she could walk straight in.
There was some shuffling, and then the door opened.
Winnifred’s eyes went to me, then to her daughter, and then back.
While she was busy checking me out, I was busy trying to remember how to breathe. Goddamn, but she was beautiful. She could’ve passed for the troublemaker’s big sister, even though I knew she was her mom.
Her face fell in the interim.
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