That brought Claire to her feet, too. “Does that mean we’re getting out?”
“I sure hope so.” And Riley did hope that.
The minutes had crawled into hours, and he wanted Claire out of there and home. Daniel and Jodi, too, only because he thought he owed them that much. After that, Riley could go home, as well, and take some pain meds. His shoulder had gone past the throbbing stage and was now screaming at him.
He followed Livvy into the squad room. Such that it was. Crime wasn’t a big problem in Spring Hill, so there was only the chief of police, Luke Mercer, two deputies and an admin assistant. Only the chief and one of the deputies were there tonight, and it was Deputy Davy Divine—his real name—who was sitting at the front desk with some papers neatly arranged in front of him.
“It’s for their bail,” Davy explained. He was a wormy-looking guy who’d never had a date or even a single look from a girl in school, but he’d found his forte with that badge. If Mayberry’s Barney Fife and a zombie had managed to have a kid, it would have looked a lot like Davy.
“How much and who do I pay?” Riley asked.
“Five hundred apiece, and you pay here. We take check, debit or credit.”
Riley whipped out his MasterCard. “But do you really think Claire and Daniel are flight risks?” He didn’t include Jodi in that because she certainly could and would hightail it out of there just for the thrill of it.
“Doesn’t matter what I think. The law’s the law. Are you paying for the Nederlands, too?” Davy asked.
“No.” And Riley couldn’t say that fast enough. He needed to get a head start on them in case they renewed their disagreement with Jodi. “Just Claire, Daniel and Jodi.” He signed the papers, and Davy took the credit card.
“I’ll have to make sure the card is good.” Davy examined it as if it were the norm for people in Spring Hill to give him fake credit cards. “Might take a while since our computer’s down, and I’ll have to call. You can sit back in there with your...friends or wait out here.”
“Great. More waiting,” Livvy mumbled.
Maybe this time it wouldn’t take as long as it had to get the paperwork done. Holding on to that hope, Riley sank down in the chair across from Davy’s desk to wait.
“Is Jodi usually like this?” Livvy asked.
“Sometimes. I’ve never been with her in a bar fight, but she tends to live life on the edge.”
Which was exactly what had attracted him to her in the first place. Of course, she was drawn to his desire to live life on the edge, too, but Riley had never mixed that particular side of him with a dose of crazy.
“Claire was supposed to have hot sex tonight,” Livvy said, sitting next to him. “Did she?”
It took him a moment to shift gears and absorb what Livvy said. Another moment to decide if he was going to answer at all. “No. Sadly, the closest she came was getting a splinter in her butt.” Realizing just how that sounded, Riley gave her a warning glare. “And if you tell anyone that, I will hunt you down.”
Livvy held up her hands in mock defense. “No threat needed. I’m not into gossip, and besides, any details I hear, I’d rather get from Claire.”
Riley wondered exactly how Claire would catalogue this night. First, she’d had to coax him out of the flashback, then they’d kissed, then she’d gotten arrested. He figured the kiss was going to get lost in all that other mess. But it wasn’t lost for him.
Nope.
He stood no chance whatsoever of forgetting exactly how Claire had felt in his arms. How she’d tasted. That sound she’d made. Now, that was a sound and a flashback he actually wanted to experience. With the way Davy was dragging his feet—he’d struck up a conversation with the chief now about whose turn it was to descale the coffeepot—there might be time for a flashback or two.
Riley was still thinking about that kiss when something else popped into his head. “What about Ethan? Who’s with him?”
“Claire got a sitter.” Livvy checked the time. “If Claire’s not out in the next hour, I’ll go to her house so the sitter can get home. I figured I’d be spending the night there anyway. Well, unless you’re staying.”
“I won’t be staying.”
Riley was certain of that. He was going to need a big dose of the painkillers, and they made him drowsy. They also made him talk in his sleep. Claire had been through enough without hearing about shit he didn’t want her to hear about.
He was so caught up in his pain and thoughts that it took him a second to realize that Livvy’s tone had changed on her next-to-last sentence.
“Why did you figure you needed to spend the night at Claire’s?” he asked.
As Riley had done earlier, Livvy paused, maybe debating if she would answer. Or rather how to answer. “When Claire was sorting through a box, she found her mother’s journal.”
Hell. Riley didn’t have to ask what was in it. He knew that if it had anything to do with her mother, it couldn’t be good.
“She’s torn up about what she read in it, Riley,” Livvy added.
Of course she was. Her mother had been dead since she was a kid, and yet she could still put knots in Claire’s stomach. “I don’t guess Claire burned it?”
Livvy shook her head. “No such luck. She put it in one of the trash boxes, but she’s been sorting for weeks, and not one trash box has left the house.”
And this one wouldn’t go out, either. Claire would end up reading every painful word in it. “Any idea what her mother wrote?”
“I only saw two words, fudging kid, except she used the real F word.”
Great. He wondered if he could somehow talk Claire into putting it in a real trash bin. One that contained stuff she’d never see again. But he had to be honest with himself. He’d likely lost a lot of clout with Claire tonight. Ironic since they’d had their first kiss.
Second one, too.
But those might be the only kisses they’d ever have. She was probably ready to wash her hands of him and his crazy girlfriend. A girlfriend who would soon become an ex if Jodi didn’t know that already. And that was an ex in a forever-and-ever kind of way, too.
Riley heard some movement in the holding cell, and he got up to make sure Claire was okay. Thankfully Jodi was asleep and snoring like a hibernating buffalo. Even Daniel had closed his eyes, and the Nederlands were all knocked out. The movement had come from an ice cube falling out of the plastic bag that Claire had been holding against her head.
“It won’t be long now,” Riley told her, something he’d been telling her since they arrived.
Even though it was against Deputy Davy’s rules, Riley sank down on the floor right next to the cell, instead of across from it.
“You think we tempted fate or something?” she asked. She was still pacing. Not that she could go far. Six steps forward, six steps back. There were definitely no remnants of the heat that’d been between them at Calhoun’s, and Riley didn’t think the chill in the room was all from the AC.
“I think we just got unlucky,” Riley answered.
“Hey, did somebody say my name?” a male voice called out.
Riley recognized the voice, of course, but he was hoping it was some kind of trick brought on by the pain and fatigue.
It wasn’t.
With his arms outstretched and that cocky grin on his face, his brother Lucky walked in.
* * *
LUCKY HADN’T EXPECTED to see party faces, but this was one notch below the gloom-and-doom stage. It had a whole vibe of one of Dante’s levels of hell.
And speaking of hell, Riley brought up the subject right away.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Riley asked, getting to his feet.
“I brought bail money. Cash. It’ll take Deputy Dweeb out there all night to process a credit card, but he knows how
to count money, provided you give him big enough bills so he doesn’t have too many of them.” Lucky had a little experience with that. “He’s getting the keys now to unlock the cell.”
Maybe it was the mention of being sprung, but thankfully Claire had a warmer reaction to Lucky than Riley had. She smiled, but that smile didn’t win him any brotherly awards with Riley because it only deepened his scowl. That scowl was probably about that phone conversation they’d had a couple of nights ago. The one where Riley grilled him about the sex talk Lucky had had with Claire ages ago.
Riley just liked to hang on to things.
Like beer, apparently.
Lucky got a strong whiff of it when he walked closer. “Jeez, what’d you do? Pour a beer over your head?”
Riley could have sent small children and animals running with that glare. “That look doesn’t work on big brothers,” Lucky let him know.
Lucky pushed past him to get to Claire and he gave her a cheek kiss through the cell bars. Like his experience with bail money, it wasn’t his first through-the-bars kiss. “Are you okay?”
She gave him a flat look, too, but then added another smile. A really small one. Of course, the new smile didn’t sit well with little brother, and Lucky wondered if Riley knew it was jealousy driving all these intense feelings. Probably not. Jealousy wasn’t covered by one of Riley’s man-rules.
“How’d you know we were here?” Claire asked.
Lucky held up his phone and showed her the flurry of calls, texts and voice mails he’d gotten in the past hour. It was the norm for the Nederlands to land in jail, but it was the story of the decade, maybe the century, for Claire to get locked up. Folks just couldn’t wait to tell him that Riley had been at the scene of the crime, too.
It was a funny, tenuous thing being a McCord. Having money generated as much admiration as it did sour grapes, and people were always happy to see a McCord come down a notch.
That was one of the reasons Lucky liked to provide such entertainment to the townsfolk. Even though he’d never get any thanks for being labeled the family screwup, it took pressure off Riley, Anna and Logan.
Deputy Dweeb finally arrived with a ring of keys that clanged and rattled as he went through them, searching for the right one. Since there weren’t that many doors in the entire town, Lucky had a theory that Davy had scrounged up the extra keys just to make himself look more important. It didn’t work. Davy could have had the keys to every door in the world, and he’d still be a dweeb.
The moment the cell door was open, Claire rushed out. She hugged him and then made a beeline for Livvy.
Ah, Livvy.
No gloom and doom for her. Well, not when Lucky had first come in anyway, but it was obvious the woman was ready to get Claire out of there.
Daniel got up, too, and he shook the snoring woman on the cot. This was Jodi, no doubt. Riley’s girlfriend and the reason for Claire’s incarceration.
Lucky would take that up with his brother later.
“You got one more paper you have to sign,” the deputy told Claire.
With Daniel still trying to rouse Jodi, Riley, Claire, Livvy and Lucky all went back into the squad room. And, yes, there was a paper to be signed. Of course, Davy had to find it first. Then he’d have to find a working pen.
Lucky wasn’t sure how Davy even made it out of the house by himself.
The wait gave Riley more chances to sling that ugly look at Lucky. “Why are you here in Spring Hill?”
Lucky shrugged. “Logan called and asked me to come home.”
No glare this time. Riley looked at him as if he’d sprouted an extra ear. “Logan calls you all the time and asks you to come home. You never do.”
“I like being unpredictable.” That was his answer, and he was sticking to it. Of course, Riley would soon figure it out. Unlike Deputy Dweeb, his brother had a functioning brain. And when Riley did figure it out, he wasn’t going to like it.
This was going to be like the potty training all over again except this time it was going to require more than pissing on a tree.
“Ouch,” Claire grumbled, getting all their attention.
Lucky hadn’t seen what had prompted her ouch, but in the aftermath he noticed she was looking at her backside. He made it to her ahead of Riley, turned her and quickly spotted the problem.
“You got splinters.” He plucked the ones he could see from her jeans. “That happened to me once. Got it when I was making out with Wendy Lee Keller against the wall outside Calhoun’s Pub.”
And the silence rolled in like London fog.
So, hell. That’s what had happened. Riley and Claire had made out. Maybe even more. Lucky glanced at them, assessing.
No. Not more.
They would have been more content, or uneasy, if they’d had sex.
But the making out had been enough. Maybe Jodi had gotten jealous. Daniel, too. Or as Lucky liked to call Daniel, Dweeb Two. The Nederlands had likely just been the rocket fuel that fed all this.
On general principle Lucky wasn’t opposed to Riley and Claire making out. But—and this was a huge but—he didn’t want Riley doing that unless he’d come to his senses and realized that playing with Claire’s heart was the same thing as giving it a good ass-whipping.
If Riley didn’t use his more than half a brain to figure that out, Lucky intended to spell it out for him.
“I need to sleep,” Jodi grumbled from behind them. Daniel had managed to get her on her feet, barely, and he had finally gotten her out of the cell. Daniel looked at Riley as if he expected him to take things from there.
Riley didn’t budge.
That half brain was doing its job. Lucky didn’t know this Jodi, but she had bad news written all over her. And Lucky should know. He was an expert at picking out bad girls. She was far more his type that GI Riley’s.
Deputy Dweeb finally made it back with the paperwork, and Lucky provided the pen. One that he’d taken from the dweeb’s desk right after he came into the police station. Dealing with the deputy was a little like getting stuck in the movie Groundhog Day, and Lucky had learned some shortcuts to speed things up. Like bringing cash and stealing pens. In case it had been needed, he also had some advice on how to descale a coffeepot.
Claire hurried to sign the paper.
“I just got a call from Wilma over at the newspaper,” the deputy said. “I think you should know they’re running a story on the pub brawl in the morning. There’ll be pictures.”
“How’d the newspaper get pictures?” Daniel howled. He was apparently the only one in the room who didn’t know the answer.
“Cell phones,” each of them answered, adding varying verbs and adjectives. Jodi even added a knowing grunt. Anyone who wasn’t falling-down drunk would have wanted to snap shots of something like that. It wasn’t as if brawls happened in the pub on a daily basis.
More like monthly.
Claire didn’t even read the paper Davy gave her. She just signed it and glanced at Lucky. “Thanks for the bail money. I’ll pay you back.” Then she turned to Livvy. “Please take me home now. I have to get some rest, and makeup concealer, before I do that photo shoot in the morning.”
For a moment Lucky thought she was just going to waltz out of there and not even say goodbye. And she did sort of do just that.
“Next time I want a beer, I’ll have it at home,” Claire grumbled.
Livvy winked at Lucky, gave him the call-me sign with her pinkie and thumb, and slipped her arm around Claire to get them moving. Claire did look back, though. At Riley this time, and Lucky tried to figure out how to describe the look she gave him. Definitely no Mona Lisa smile moment. More like Munch’s The Scream. There was no call-me gesture involved.
“She’s just tired and upset,” Lucky said. And he nudged Riley, as well, and moved him to the big glas
s window so they could watch Claire and Livvy leave. “But you gotta admit, this proves exactly what I was saying to you the last time we talked.”
Riley looked at him as if he’d sprouted another nose to go with that extra ear. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“That.” Lucky motioned toward Claire. “That’s the face of a woman who’s in love with you.”
Even though they were in the police station and Lucky knew it would hurt like hell, he let Riley ball up his fist and punch him.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CLAIRE FIGURED THAT was the worst photo shoot she’d ever done, but at least she had managed to finish it. Not easy with her head still hurting from the beer and lack of sleep.
Especially the lack of sleep.
After getting home from the bar brawl/arrest ordeal, she had been so wound up that she hadn’t slept a wink. She’d finally given up, left Ethan with Livvy and had gotten some pictures edited before leaving hours earlier than necessary for the photo shoot. Now that it was done, she was going to have to face a cold, hard reality.
She had kissed Riley, and she’d liked it. Too much. So much so that it was driving her crazy. And it was just the tip of the frosty little iceberg that was now her life.
She had a police record.
Her face was plastered in the town newspaper.
And, yes, it was there because she hadn’t been able to resist glancing at it in the stand when she’d driven past the grocery store. On the front page was a picture of one of the Nederlands flinging Jodi at her. It looked a lot worse than it’d been, which, of course, was exactly why it had gone on the front page. Claire had no doubts, none, that by now every copy had already sold out.
Balancing her camera equipment, Claire let herself into the house, expecting to see Summer Starkley, one of the twins, there with Ethan. But it wasn’t Summer or her sister, Savannah. It was Livvy. She and Ethan were at the kitchen table, and judging from the volume of cookies and ice cream in front of them, they were either on a quest to become diabetic or celebrating something.
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